Words by Smiley Team
A Manchester-based artist has brought smiles to her community by setting up a postcard exchange between school children and care home residents.
Helen Middleton is an industrial designer, who creates furniture, lighting, products and artwork from 100% recyclable materials. During the pandemic – in December 2020 – she felt called to make a difference to those who might be feeling lonely.
"I decided to work with my local school to create Christmas cards for the residents of the five local care homes in Marple, Stockport," she tells Smiley News. "Covid-19 has highlighted the vulnerability of the elderly and how isolated they have been from their families due to the restrictions. Usually at Christmas the local children would sing carols to them, but due to crossing over school bubbles and Covid restrictions this event could not happen. I just thought what little gesture could we do to brighten up the residents' Christmas time.
"I was mindful of how busy schools are at Christmas, so asked the headteacher what she thought of the idea, and thankfully she loved it.”
[Read more stories about everyday heroes who are changing the world for the better]
Helen decided to contact five more local care homes, to see if they were on board. Then she set to work emailing them and asking for their residents’ first names, so the children could create individual cards with their names on.
“I brought some blank cards and some Christmas boxes and gave them to Year 5 and 6, to use their imagination and create fun personalised Christmas cards for the residents," she says. "I just wanted to prove these small ideas are low cost but have such a massive positive impact on people.”
Feedback from the school was that the children absolutely loved illustrating the cards. Once they'd drawn one, they went back to their teacher and asked for another card to illustrate. The cards were quarantined when Helen collected them from the school, then quarantined once again in the care home to make sure this project was completely Covid-19 safe.
“When I glimpsed the Christmas cards, I was amazed at how beautiful they were, with such detail," she says. "I noticed some of the cards had the residents name incorporated as part of the design which I thought was lovely. When I delivered the cards to the care homes, the care home staff were so happy and overwhelmed by the gesture.
"They have had such a hard time during the pandemic that this brought a little light relief to everyone.”
(This woman is on a mission to tackle elderly loneliness)
Helen has now decided to continue the project, with care home residents writing back to the children.
“One resident was an artist in her earlier life and the care home staff said how much she enjoyed creating the cards,” she says.
“I'm so proud of the children for sparing their time to help me with this project. Small regular gestures can have such an amazing effect on people's moral and mental health.”
You can read more about Helen’s work here.
Are you inspired by Helen's community initiative? Why not set one up in your own community? We'd love to know if you do – email [email protected].
